Project Managers vs Workers

During our first class, we got to do our first exercise. This exercise was making the paper puppets. Though I was not involved with the workers or even the timer guys. I was observing the whole operation. The teacher acted like the project manager, and 5 class colleagues were doing the assembly line workers job.

During this exercise, each worker was given a task to be done. The teacher was putting pressure on them as she was acting like the project manager. As a result, they were trying hard to finish as much paper puppets as possible. I was observing the behavior of each worker, since the last three workers were sitting idle until the second worker finishes her job. Her task was a longer task than the rest, thus she was a bottleneck. The class was fun and we have learned a lot.

Some of what we have learned from this class was:

  • The way you layout the operations space, is going to influence the production and product quality, it even influences the communication between the workers. During our exercise, though they were close to each other, each worker was only talking to the one right next to him/her.
  • During the exercise, the first worker tried to optimize the way he worked but the project manager which is the teacher told him to follow the process. This teaches us that if we ever want to  re-engineer a process, we need to talk to the workers. They see the obstacles, they most probably know how to optimize their work.
  • During the exercise, the workers found defected paper, but due to the pressure, they passed it on just to finish the process. What we could learn from this, when project managers or management puts so much pressure on workers, workers will have ethical issues and lead to high rate of defected products.
  • After we were done with the exercise, the teacher asked the workers how did they feel about their work load. Some said they were doing so much work, others said they didn’t have to do much. It is probably one of most faced issue with operation workers. Work isn’t divided equally among workers.
  • We also have discussed what we could have done to help our second worker which she had more complicated work to do, we have came with so many solutions which seemed to help, like hiring one more worker with her. Or distributing the work among other workers too.
Here are some pictures that I took during class while we were doing the exercise: (Note: Some faces are blurred because they asked me to blur their faces). Edit: One more colleague asked for her picture to be blurred., so I re-uploaded the images.

6 thoughts on “Project Managers vs Workers

  1. This made me think about the importance of project manager role and how much important that he should provide the workers with the motivation, direction, and information needed to do their jobs. This made me think the importance of time and project controlling and how much important that activities should finished in proper sequence and on time and meets its quality goals.

    We learned also resources utilization best practice and how we can customized the papers.

  2. I totally believe that project management it need to identify the task and mission for each team when they are clear about their task and the time that they have to achieve so they can go according to the plan and the successful manger will know how to identify the critical path , so he could estimate the exact time to achieve the project , as what you said in your blog when we do these activity in the class we notice hat worker 1 , 4 and 5 they was not doing that much load from the work as worker 2 was under pressure to do her job, so the project manger have to see what he to change the plan , and divide the activity in new basses ,by reducing the worker number or dividing the work between the worker in deferent basis ..

  3. I totally believe that project management it need to identify the task and mission for each team when they are clear about their task and the time that they have to achieve so they can go according to the plan and the successful manger will know how to identify the critical path , so he could estimate the exact time to achieve the project , as what you said in your blog when we do these activity in the class we notice hat worker 1 , 4 and 5 they was not doing that much load from the work as worker 2 was under pressure to do her job, so the project manger have to see what he must do to change the plan , and divide the activity in new plan ,by reducing the worker number or dividing the work between the worker in deferent basis ..

  4. Indeed, the project managers play a very important role in motivating, providing instructions and eliminating faults while performing their tasks. The Project managers provides better management of the resources available, meeting their deadlines in time and utilizing the best way to achieve their goals more cost efficiently and meeting the required standards required by their developers.

  5. I like how those activities are set and well planned; this activity illustrated the importance of the Project Manager. The Project Manager plays a great role on whether the project is completed or not. The project Manager is vital in directing the project to be done with high performance therefore high quality products or vice versa. This activity also showed me that Project Managers should be highly skilled in terms of leadership , motivation , quick response , and creative.

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